First big vote of Mitchell School project looms in Bridgewater

Monday

May 22, 2017 at 4:38 PMMay 23, 2017 at 6:18 AM

Voters will be asked during a special election June 10 to approve an $800,000 debt exclusion to fund the costs associated with a state-mandated feasibility study of possible alternatives for a fix at the beleagured Mitchell School.

Tom Relihan The Enterprise TMRelihan_ENT

BRIDGEWATER – For more than two years, students and staff alike at the George E. Mitchell Elementary School have found themselves learning and teaching out of a space ill -equipped for their needs while the town grapples with the challenge of fixing their storm-damaged building.

At the same time, the Bridgewater Middle School, temporarily serving as the Mitchell, has been essentially severed, with each half of the student body moved to a separate building.

The situation has been far from ideal for the Bridgewater-Raynham Regional School District, but if voters in Bridgewater approve during a special election set for June 10, it will be able to take a significant step forward in its quest to find a way to re-open the stricken school.

The ballot will include a question asking voters to pass an $800,000 debt exclusion, which would allow the town to raise the money it needs to fund a study of potential fixes for the school.

The Mitchell School’s problems began when part of the 21-year-old school’s roof unexpectedly collapsed under the weight of heavy, built-up snow during the winter of 2015.

Since then, the school has been closed and its 1,042 students were moved to the Bridgewater Middle School. That touched off a logistical domino effect, forcing the seventh and eighth graders to relocate to the Williams Intermediate School and the Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School.

Six sessions of pre-school were also moved to the Raynham Middle School.

An engineering firm later reviewed the incident and determined poor-quality wood trusses and improper construction practices significantly contributed to the collapse.

If the debt exclusion passes, the money raised would pay for the costs associated with the state-mandated feasibility study.

The district was invited in February by the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which helps towns with major school building projects, to participate in an accelerated building program to find a solution, and it has been been working with the agency since then.

The Authority would reimburse about half the study’s cost, according to Superintendent Derek Swenson.

The study is designed to produce a “cost-effective and educationally appropriate” solution for the school, which will then be presented to the Authority’s board of directors, according to a fact sheet recently released by the district.

District administrators have said that could take the form of a partial or complete renovation of the existing building, or the construction of an entirely new school.

Swenson previously told The Enterprise the cost could fall anywhere between $12 and $90 million.

Exclusion vs. Override

State law caps the amount by which a town’s budget can increase over the levy limit to 2 ½ percent unless voters approve a referendum allowing the town to exceed that limit by a two-thirds majority.

The law distinguishes between three different types of levy limit increases: a debt override, a capital exclusion and a debt exclusion.

A debt override is a permanent increase to the town’s levy limits and is usually used to fund parts of the operating budget. A capital exclusion is a one-year increase to raise the money for an entire capital project.

The referendum will ask voters to approve the third kind, a debt exclusion, which is a temporary increase used to borrow money to fund a specific project.

The additional property taxes are removed from the levy when the term of the bond used to fund the project ends.

The Authority is expected to pick up about half of the cost of the study, leaving the town responsible for roughly $400,000, according to the district fact sheet.

Taxes would be expected to increase by about 40 cents per month for the next three decades, the sheet said.

Should voters reject the debt exclusion, the town would receive no state funding and work with the Authority would cease. If that were to happen, the fact sheet said, the average homeowner could expect an extra $2.50 on their tax bill each month for five years as the town moves forward on the study without state aid.

At the time of the Mitchell School’s construction in 1993, the Authority had not yet been created.